Stunt work is about deception. Its goal is to convince the audience of ideas that are inherently untrue; while the movie star sits in his trailer, his double is the one really leaping off a bridge to his death (except it's all on a soundstage and the bridge is a set). A stunt only succeeds if it remains anonymous. Appropriately, THE STUNT MAN is about that very thing. When you only have a crazy movie director's word to go on, how can you believe your eyes?

The director, Eli Cross, is played by a sweaty, bug-eyed Peter O'Toole. He's making an allegorical antiwar film about Vietnam when his stuntman is killed driving a car off a bridge. The only witness to (and possible cause of) the accident is a vagrant Vietnam vet on the run from the police named Cameron (an unnervingly convincing Steve Railsback). The director needs a new stuntman and the vet needs a place to hide from the cops and so an arrangement is struck.

But things are not as they seem on the set of Cross’ "Devil's Squadron." After watching a day of shooting, Cameron spies an old woman standing on the edge of the ocean. She falls in and Cameron rescues her, but the old women fights off the rescue and then peels off her skin, revealing a beautiful movie star underneath (Barbara Hershey). Later, Cameron is trained for a stunt which hinges on a key prop, an awning which is supposed to break his fall and support his weight. When the stunt is filmed, the awning gives way, and Cameron falls through, crashing into a skylight. Then he's hoisted onto the shoulders of a whole fleet of naked Germans who strip him of his clothing. Finally Cross appears and yells cut; the awning was always intended to give way, but he lied to Cameron because sometimes Cross finds that actors act more naturally if they do not know what is going to happen. Cameron was allegedly in no danger, but he's not so sure; after all, a stuntman has already died during the making of the picture, and whispers on the set suggest Cross was more concerned about getting a shot of the wreck than saving his drowning employee. Just how far will Cross go for the movie?

In a more traditional movie Cross would be an unlikable prick, if not totally insane; the old caricature of Hollywood that we've seen countless times. But THE STUNT MAN cast O'Toole, who had a gift for making even the most despicable men charmingly sympathetic. With his indefatigable spirit and mischievous gleam in the eye, you can understand exactly why people want to work for him, even if he screams and yells, and, yes, possibly plans their deaths.

Screenwriters Richard Rush (who also directed) and Lawrence B. Marcus were also smart enough to complicate the Cameron character; like John Rambo from the original FIRST BLOOD, he is a man haunted and destroyed by his experiences in the Vietnam War. Combat shock and flashbacks make him an unreliable protagonist and only serve to confuse the audience more: is Cross really trying to kill him? Or is Cameron the crazy one? Railsback has a strange accent, an angular face, and a dangerous look in his eye. He looks every bit the part of a borderline psychopathic killer.

An ending that is a bit too straightforward -- and not nearly as clever as it believes itself -- does disappoint, but given the ingenious setup, there may have been no way to satisfyingly conclude THE STUNT MAN without throwing out everything that had proceeded it. Instead, we feel Rush's hand pushing things along more and more firmly as the conclusion approaches. We shouldn't; a good stuntman would never let us sense his presence.

IF YOU LIKED THE STUNT MAN, CHECK OUT: THE DEER HUNTER (1978), another intensely disturbing tale of Vietnam combat shock, featuring outstanding performances from Robert De Niro, John Cazale, and Christopher Walken, who won an Academy Award for his role.

THE BAD

THE GREEN BERETS is what happens when someone is so convinced they are right about something that they will manufacture the truth to prove their point. Hollywood's biggest movie star, John Wayne, was convinced that the Vietnam War was a great idea and to prove the conflict's necessity to a disenfranchised public, he co-directed and starred in BERETS, as historically accurate as a bad episode of "Hogan's Heroes" and as powerful a recruiting tool for the Armed Forces as a good episode of "Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C."

Wayne was an outspoken proponent for war and made BERETS, a pet project that he proudly labeled pro-American propaganda in an interview with Playboy Magazine, as one would manufacture faulty evidence to present at a trial. The film, based on a popular collection of essays by Robin Moore, was widely reviled by critics and the antiwar establishment, and a huge hit at the box office. To Playboy, Wayne dismissed the critics by explaining, "they don't like my politics, and they were condemning the war, not the picture." Wayne was right that these "irrationally liberal" critics disagreed with his stance, but that doesn't excuse his bloated and almost unendurably long picture.

Wayne plays Col. Mike Kirby, who travels to Vietnam to lead a squad of elite special forces, first protecting an outpost (in a scenario that feels vaguely similar to his other pet project, 1960's THE ALAMO) then kidnapping a Viet Cong general. This is essentially all that happens for nearly two and a half hours, while Wayne's squad of young, enthusiastic soldiers is whittled down one by one, while the unkillable Duke walks away from a massive helicopter crash with barely a scratch on him.

Ironically, Wayne, despite his jingoistic attitude and bulletproof characterization, never served in the military. According to the book John Wayne's America by Gary Wills, the actor received multiple deferments in order to avoid military service in World War II, because, Wills argues, he realized World War II provided him an opportunity to further his struggling career while his competition fought overseas. He even quotes Wayne telling a friend that he could feel the draft, “breathing down [his] neck.” In the decades that followed, Wayne became an increasingly outspoken proponent of military forces, first in Korea and then later in Vietnam, possibly out of the guilt he felt for not serving.

While I find Wayne's attitude hypocritical, his film could have been a hypocritical entertainment, but THE GREEN BERETS is so intent on proving that the Vietnam War is winnable that its story's conflicts are pushed to the background in the interest of presenting the well-oiled and unstoppable machine that is the United States Armed Forces. There’s very little engaging about the story of a man being proven right. In a key subplot, a cynical reporter ("The Fugitive"'s David Janssen) goes to Vietnam to see what it's really like after Wayne insists news reports on the conflict are inaccurate. But, as Wills puts it, this is the opposite of the era's reality; many network reporters went to Vietnam believing the war could be won, then found their hopes shattered when they saw firsthand what Vietnam was like.

John Wayne was convinced only he knew the truth. I can only assume that THE GREEN BERETS’ status as one of the Duke’s biggest box office hits was the result of an audience desperately wanting to believe him.

INSTEAD OF THE GREEN BERETS, CHECK OUT: JET PILOT (1957), the quirky tale of Wayne’s Air Force pilot falling in love with a Russian spy (played by an accent-less Janet Leigh). The picture was produced by Howard Hughes, who sated his airplane fetish by adding in jet engine noises to the soundtrack every time Leigh removes an article of clothing. Icky Cold War fun for the whole family.

THE UGLY

In the 1950s, the science-fiction film used the power of allegory to create some of the most vivid portrayals of the decade ever put on screen. In, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, Don Siegel used paranoia about Communist subversion to craft a warning about the dangers of witch-hunting and conformity. In THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, Robert Wise taught viewers about the perils of war.

And in RED PLANET MARS, Harry Horner informed the world that Jesus partied hard on Mars and, time and weather permitting, destroyed dirty, dirty Commies with his mind.

Well, they couldn't all be brainy, and RED PLANET MARS proves it. This ludicrous sci-fi hullaballoo will have you scratching your head, laughing your ass off, and shocked by an ending so bonkers you would think David Koresh wrote it.

Peter Graves stars as scientist Chris Cronyn who, along with his wife Linda (Andrea King), have created a radio device that can communicate with Mars. Their machine is cribbed from parts created by a Nazi scientist named Franz Calder (Herbert Berghof), who was jailed for war crimes. While the Cronyns use their machine to contact Mars, Calder spies on their progress using his own machine. Calder now works for the Communists, who want to contact Mars before the Capitalist pig-dogs do. See the movie's called RED PLANET MARS for a reason.

Things get really trippy when Cronyn's messages start getting responses. In a more typical genre entry, Cronyn would learn that the thirst for knowledge is like the thirst for tequila: satisfying to a point, but extremely dangerous if taken too far. That message seems embedded in RED PLANET MARS’ first hour, as the Martians share stories of 300 year life spans and limitless crops and energy, spurring an economic panic that crushes the entire capitalist system. At this point, it appears that Cronyn sorta screwed the pooch with his whole “learn from the Martians” plan.

But just when the Russians were toasting their vodka and eating their borsht and having sex with goats, or whatever Cold War nonsense we believed about them at the time, the Martians suddenly begin delivering messages with cryptic religious themes that may refer to New Testament passages. Suddenly Earth is gaga for religion, and lo and behold, the Soviets stage a new revolution, overthrow the government, and create a new one where people are free to celebrate their religion, so long as it is monotheistic and hails the Martians and such.

It's tough to decide what concept is more absurd: that Jesus might be chillin' on Mars waiting for thousands of years for someone to discover Morse code and send him a message in it or that political and religious leaders would actually believe that Jesus is chillin' on Mars waiting for thousands of years for someone to discover Morse code and send him a message. So he’s Space Jesus? Call me crazy, but that sounds disrespectful to me.

It's also amusing to consider that while RED PLANET MARS revels in the new world order it creates, declaring it a utopia akin to a new Garden of Eden, the film does not pause to consider that it has destroyed capitalism and crippled communism and offered no possible replacement. What are the people of the world going to eat after people stop selling wheat? Wishes aren’t going to fill up your stomach. The Martians, like any sneaky cult, claim to offer long life spans and cosmic energy but, like any sneaky cult, they're a little stingy on the details and permanently clam up before they can share any of it with us. Put up or shut up Martians, I want my 400 year life and laser beam eyeballs. Can you make that happen?

(Come to think of it, is a 400 year life all that it’s cracked up to be? That’s basically having one good life span followed by three more really long crummy ones. That’s 300 years of having to get others to feed you and wipe up your poo. No thanks!)

Without spoiling it, RED PLANET MARS builds to a conclusion that is both narratively satisfying and ideologically kookie and includes happy suicides and a disturbingly humanizing portrayal of a Nazi (OK so he created some impressive technology...I'm still not willing to overlook mass genocide, sorry!) When I say RED PLANET MARS may be the strangest science-fiction film of all time I mean it with all sincerity. And if and when Space Jesus starts sending us messages from Mars I will gladly eat my words.

IF YOU LIKED RED PLANET MARS, CHECK OUT: MARS ATTACKS! (1996), Tim Burton’s cheerfully anarchic take on interstellar domination. This is how I like my Martians, instead of quoting Biblical scripture, they commit genocide while honking “ACK! ACK! ACK!” To be fair, I can’t speak Martian, so it’s possible that “ACK! ACK! ACK!” does have a New Testament translation.